Meaningful sustainability jobs

Much of my professional journey has centered around one tool: Life cycle assessment (LCA). For a decade, I studied it, wrote about it, applied it, talked about it, and surely also dreamt about it. We are like a married couple, LCA and I. And like in every marriage there are issues. My issue is what I call the LCA paradox.

Let me try to explain it. Everyone seems to find LCA so irresistible. So scientific and sexy and true, taking all environmental impacts into account, expanding its system boundaries to such a degree that burden shifting is unthought of. Which means that they want to use it for everything, for all types of decision making. That is where I see a risk. LCA is great, but not for everything. Could the popularity of LCA, a tool designed to optimize existing product systems, reduce the much-needed impetus for structural change?

I had to ask someone clever. Someone who started their LCA journey while I was still in kindergarten. A real LCA-dinosaur in other words. Tomas Ekvall, an internationally recognized researcher and expert on LCA, with more than 30 years of experience, fits the criteria.

LCA is everywhere. In business communication, in EU policies, on the products we buy, in consultancy offerings, and in research grants. How did LCA become so popular?

Having been so long in the game, Tomas has experienced that LCA has had a bumpy ride. “When I started doing LCA in the early 90’s there was a lot of faith in what LCA could deliver. That one could obtain complete and objective knowledge. Then, in the mid- late 90s it became common knowledge that one could get the results one wanted, and LCA got into a crisis of trust. But LCA got out of it and a new and mature understanding emerged.” Tomas thinks the popularity that LCA has obtained is a combination of having survived a crisis of trust, and a growing demand for a systems perspective. “We want product information, and that is what LCA has been developed for”.

Is a product gaining legitimacy just by having its carbon footprint calculated and published? If we compare a product with another and showing which has the lowest carbon footprint… is that not taking focus away from the real question; is the product in itself necessary?

“Absolutely”, Tomas answers. “LCA fits well in an efficiency paradigm: it is a good tool for producing things in a better way. But it is not so good if you want to produce the right things. We calculate in terms in functional units, but we never consider how many functional units the planet can handle.” Tomas thinks we need to ask more questions. “To examine how we can produce a luxury product in the best way is not meaningless. But we should not forget that when we do an LCA we miss other questions: are large cars needed? Diamond rings? If so; for what?”  

Is it so that the product focus of LCA, and the eagerness to use LCA in many decision-making contexts, is a distraction from comprehending the entirety? Are we overlooking the big picture while being preoccupied with functional units?

“On EU and national level, LCA has become a bit of a buzzword”, Tomas says. He realized several years ago that material flow analysis (MFA) should probably be used more often for decision making on that level. “MFA is less subjective. You avoid some of the allocation problems that occur when you try to fit everything into a product perspective”. On the other hand, Tomas does not think LCA has to be deployed as static as it is often done today. “There is a flexibility in what the functional unit can be. Does one have to ask the question on a product level? Using ‘passenger km’ or ‘year’ makes it possible to include aspects beyond the efficiency paradigm”.

Tomas also thinks there can be great value in guiding LCA commissioners. “Helping those who want or think they want an LCA to find out whether LCA is what they actually need. Could looking at existing reports be sufficient? Could other methods fit better? There can also be great value in promoting the life cycle thinking instead of LCA as such”.

From a company perspective, cannot LCA be seen a welcoming distraction? A little more renewable energy here, a little more recycled content there, and voilà you are a responsible business with sustainable products. Are fluffy hard-to-obtain strategies dealing with the business model not so important to focus on when you have LCA to feed green marketing needs?

“I am not sure LCA is getting in the way, but the risk is there, that LCA is used as some kind of receipt for having dealt with sustainability”, Tomas answers. “To get to a sustainable society there are three questions that must be addressed; what we should produce, how much of it, and how to produce it. Those that want to retain their economic activity agree on the importance of addressing the last question, the one about efficiency. The two first questions are much more controversial. In principle, LCA can be used to steal the limelight so that the other questions are forgotten. But if LCA did not exist it does not necessarily mean that it would be any easier to address those questions.”

Am I the only worried LCA person?

“In my experience, many that are new to the LCA field make the same journey”, Tomas says. “Enthusiasm – distrust – acceptance. Going from ‘Wow, now I can find out anything in an objective matter’, to ‘Oh no, you can get any result you want’, to ‘Oh well, at least I learn something and if I’m just transparent with my method choices it will be ok’.”

I can recognize that journey so well from my time working at a research institute and doing my PhD about LCA. First, I thought I would be able to answer any question. Then, my PhD ended up being about the uncertainty of LCA. I did to some extent reach the acceptance mode, but gaining industry experience turned everything upside down again.

Through my discussions with Tomas, I realize that my issue with LCA is not only a worry, but also a frustration about the lack of public discourse about limits of validity. Is the acceptance mode making us careful? Comfortable? Disengaged? I wish that the critical discussions that Tomas tells me do indeed take place in academia could find their way out in the public and solve my LCA paradox.